


the nymph atop the sunless pyramid

by GStK



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Genderfluid Character, Multi, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: but lazarus never came back.
Relationships: Helel Ben Sahar/Lucilius (Granblue Fantasy), Helel ben Sahar/Helel ben Shalem (Granblue Fantasy)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	the nymph atop the sunless pyramid

there is light.

radiation. the black spot far above you sends out energy, heat, and particles of love. it roams the ceiling of your world. it casts everything in stark relief, chiaroscuro. white and black.

you know the skin of your nails is broken and muddy, brown and red. you’ve worn them down to the pads of your fingers.

digging your way out of your own coffin will do that to you.

white and black. he thinks he’s special. he stands at the bottom of your pyramid, chin turned upward. his robes wrap around his calves like serpents.

your dress pools down across the top, embracing every single angle, hypotenuse especially. rags. you were buried like a queen. you woke up a pauper.

riches mean nothing to you. that’s where he’s wrong.

white and black. he thought sticking a piece of gold between your lips would keep you happy. it just makes it harder to scream.

if you must speak in questions, then so must he.

he tries to put words to you. they’re soaked up by the stark void around you. you double-rap your temple. think, speaker. think.

‘what dream is this?’ he asks.

‘what is a mirror?’ you parry. black, white.

his lips form around an answer. he likes to give answers. more than that, he likes to withhold them. the statement he releases erupts into black fire, oxygen and hydrogen exploding into water. he flinches. you would smile.

later: ‘why are you awake?’ he ponders. he places his hands on the base of the pyramid. his wings wisp behind him and dissipate. if he desires to unseat you, he must climb. poor sisyphus.

you say, ‘why did you tear down the walls of babylon?’

he heaves himself up by the cracks in the first brick. ‘how else to reach the tower?’

flood the universe with pure water. total reset. clap your hands and let the expansion begin again.

the people come together with one tongue, one dream. but god never liked a unicellular organism, did he?

second level. he breathes, though he need not, in exhaustion. exasperation? exultation.

‘did i leave you too long?’ asks he.

‘did you?’ you can’t remember, though. he took that from you too. he’s cut off your nose to spite your shared face. your first role is as witness. ‘do you think you are enough?’

‘i don’t know,’ he confesses with a shake of his head. his hair tumbles around his shoulders. doubt walks the fine line between fact and fiction, answer and inquiry.

third brick. fourth brick. shalem; shalim; salem, the town of jerusalem. shalom. your blessed name means welcome, bids you come to the holy land.

the black spot above you swings like a pendulum.

‘what are these trials? why do you test me?’

‘why do you hide me from our own people?’ you ponder.

without answer, he continues his fruitless climb. the pyramid offers no succor. its sides are sharp.

you hope his fingers grow gnarled and bloody.

halfway there. he poses, to you, another empty thought: ‘what is dusk?’

‘what is dawn?’

‘what is dawn,’ he replies in rainbow tones of confidence, ‘if not the birth and rebirth of the world?’

‘what is the dusk,’ you mock quietly, ‘but the hard limit to the speed of light?’

‘won’t you ask me your riddle?’ he says instead. you narrow your eyes.

‘there are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. who are the two sisters?’

you can feel the radiation of his smile when the black spot begins its regress.

‘is the answer not “dawn and dusk?”’

you do not reply, which is the same as a yes. white and black. his brightness wafts over you like a spotlight. then, it disappears, and you are again a shadow.

he is grown cold with uncertainty. ‘why do you not disappear?’

you shrug. ‘why do you perceive yourself both heracles and oedipus? did you think i would self-immolate if you spoke true?’

he climbs the seventh rung and stops there. he does not like to be perceived as he is: pure white, naked, ignorant. he is dawn in the metaphorical shape -- just a babe. you are dusk in her final effigy: old, bitter, wise.

‘it would seem i need you, doesn’t it?’ he says wryly.

‘and it would seem we need the other, would it not?’ you snarl back.

it’s not how you started, each a speaker for a different mouth. it’s where you’re at: tongue in chains, unable to speak your truths by his master’s intervention. the passage of sin continues from father to son and mother to daughter. you are not female and he is not male. you are perceived in these ways by the wayward people.

ninth brick. he touches your leg, brings your shin to his cheek. your body leeches all of his warmth.

‘if i said i was sorry, would it make a difference?’ he whispers against your skin.

white and black. the meeting space between you coalesces into a kind of grey. he holds his hand out to be brought up, asking your forgiveness, wishing to sit beside you.

you raise your hand. you feel him smile. then, the warmth fades again.

the edges of the observable universe appear above you. it’s a big, black circle ringed with redshifted light. the black spot sparks with potassium salt, dissects your stark world with purples. the lightless sun obeys your will and comes to hover just above your palm.

‘if i said i loved you--’ he tries.

you lance through him. ‘and if i loved you in return? if you knew how much i loved you? if you knew i knew you loved your clone more than i, what would you do?’

you don’t wear jealousy as a cloak. you are not capable of jealousy. you must simply speak in concepts, state facts as if they were hypotheticals. what a drab existence.

‘do you not believe we are past the days of adam and eve, that love cannot pass between multiple hearts?’ his mouth is dry. the sunspots are boiling, reaching out in tendrils to stroke his face.

you are the bright, unearthly nymph hiding the lady in the pyramid. you are the sphinx holding passage through to the city of thebes. you are hatshephut and he is thutmose ii. you are destined, like e = hc/λ and Etotal = _σ_ T⁴ but always fated to drift apart. 

the dawn cascades with possibilities: love, longing, and heat death.

the dusk represents the real state of the current universe: pulling apart, the vanishing of the stars, inevitable big rip. isolation.

the father, a lord at war at war with himself.

he begins to tremble when you bring the black spot down.

‘what have i done wrong?’ he begs.

your eyes glow red as the lightless solarity begins to swallow you both.

‘everything,’ you tell him, when hydrogen and oxygen start ripping apart again, pulling the chains from your tongue. ‘this is a dream. this is your warning.

‘how quick will you learn, speaker?’

you vanish into particulates. nevertheless, you are continually with him.

let light shine out of darkness.


End file.
